Reddit-Created ‘Rome, Sweet Rome’ Sci-Fi Pic Becoming a Reality

Let this be an inspiration to all you aspiring writers: you just never know where and when you might be discovered. Take 'Rome, Sweet Rome,' for example: the project was born on the social news and entertainment site Reddit, and now it's moving forward at a major studio. The internet really is good for something!

'Rome, Sweet Rome' is a time-travel story about a squad of US marines who go back in time and find themselves fighting a Roman legion. The idea was hatched by author James Erwin, who apparently took a random question posed on Reddit -- "Could a marine battalion take on the Roman empire?" -- and spun it off into an ongoing story that hooked a plethora of readers, even inspiring scores of fan-made posters like the one you see above. Producer Adam Kolbrenner spotted it after it was voted up to Reddit's home page and brought the concept to Warner Bros. The rest is history.

According to Variety, Erwin wrote a draft of the script, but now the WB has brought on a new scribe, 'Apollo 18' screenwriter Brian Miller, to rework it. Miller's draft has changed the soldiers from marines to US Special Forces, but evidently the concept is still the same. '300' producer Gianni Nunnari is producing, which seems fitting. (Imagine, if you will, a studio exec pitching the movie as '300' meets 'Black Hawk Down.')

You can check out the official 'Rome, Sweet Rome' Facebook page here for comments and background info from Erwin. You can also see how it all started over on Reddit.